


Cambion

by dogmatix



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Cambion, GFY, M/M, Magic Reveal(sort of), Succubi & Incubi, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogmatix/pseuds/dogmatix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin isn't the only one with secrets, and Arthur is not amused. Set post-S1</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cambion

“Arthur. I’m a sorcerer.” He’d said it. He couldn’t believe he’d said it. Merlin’s heart thundered in his ears, and he felt cold all over.

The fire in the hearth crackled in the silence. It was late, long past sundown on a cool autumn day. And Merlin had just confessed to Arthur.

The two of them were sitting on Arthur’s bed, half-turned to face each other. After weeks of dancing around it, their oblique courtship had reached a watershed moment yesterday when Arthur had pinned Merlin to a wall and kissed him breathless.

It had taken a restless, sleepless night, but Merlin had finally decided that he couldn’t, _couldn’t_ do this and not tell Arthur about his magic. So Merlin had scraped his courage together and confessed.

Arthur was silent. Finally unable to take it anymore, Merlin looked up. Arthur’s face was utterly blank, his body solid and still.

“Arthur. Say something.” Merlin’s hands clenched against each other.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Why-? Be _cause_ , Arthur! Because you deserve to know, I mean, you’ve always deserved to know and I’m _so sorry_ for not telling you before, but now, now… I couldn’t let there be a lie, even by omission, if we’re going to- to do this. To be together. And. I. Yeah…” Merlin trailed off.

There was silence again, until Merlin thought he would break from it.

“Get out.” Arthur’s voice was flat and cold.

“Arthur?”

“Get. Out.”

Out of Arthur’s room? Out of Arthur’s life? Out of the castle? Out of Camelot entirely? Merlin almost asked, but his courage failed him, and he left, head bowed and shoulders hunched. He returned to his room and spent another sleepless night there.

The following days were pure hell. Arthur was cold, dismissive, abrupt. Merlin was saddled with enough chores to choke a horse, and Arthur seemed to always be watching him with that cold, blank face. But he hadn’t been thrown in the dungeon or onto a pyre, and Merlin held to that slim hope fiercely.

It was the evening of the seventh, or maybe the eight day after Merlin’s confession, and he was undressing Arthur for bed, when Arthur grabbed him by the arm and dragged him over to the bed, forcing him to sit. Arthur himself, still in tunic and trousers, stared down at him intently.

“I don’t understand you.”

“Because I came to Camelot when I have magic?” Merlin asked, subdued.

Arthur huffed. “That too. But no, mainly the fact that _you thought I didn’t know_.”

Merlin’s jaw dropped. “You… you… you _knew_?!” Merlin jumped up, forcing Arthur to face him, “Then what the bloody hell was this last week all about you bloody prat! I thought you were going to hand me over to your father, or, or banish me from Camelot, or- I don’t know! Something!”

“Perhaps I should have!” Arthur snarled, but the anger didn’t quite seem aimed at Merlin, anymore.

“How long have you known?!”

Arthur glared at Merlin, mouth set in a flat, unhappy line. “Oh I don’t know, _Mer_ lin, how about _since you announced it in front of my father!_ ”

“Since the _afanc?!_ But you never said anything!”

“Of course I never bloody said anything, I was being discrete and I _thought you realized_ that.”

“Then what the _bloody hell_ was this last week all about?!” Merlin wailed, standing not five inches from Arthur.

Arthur’s mouth snapped shut, and his expression blanked so fast Merlin almost got whiplash. The anger drained out of him, leaving him confused and uncertain. “Arthur, what is going on?”

“You’re not the only one with secrets,” Arthur sneered.

Merlin stared at Arthur’s ever-so-slightly hunched shoulders. “What- Are you saying _you_ have a secret?” Merlin asked, confused.

“I thought it would be fine. I thought it wouldn’t matter, but you had to go and be an _idiot_ , and now it suddenly does matter.”

“What does?”

Arthur’s mouth twisted unhappily. “Secrets. You would confess your magic to me, even though you thought I might have you killed – no don’t argue – or banished or flogged or whatever other ridiculous notions you came up with. It matters that much to you, that we be honest with each other.”

Merlin didn’t quite know what to say. “Uhm. Yes?”

Arthur ran a hand through his hair, leaving it scruffy and wild. “I’ve spent this past week trying to work out if I should tell you.”

“So you’ve been making me suffer for nothing?” Merlin asked, outraged, “What could possibly be so bad that it’s worse than being a sorcerer, which is punishable by being _burned alive_?”

Arthur turned away, gathered his thoughts for a second. “When you tried to sacrifice yourself for Gwen. Did you ever wonder why they all believed me when I said you weren’t a sorcerer?”

“Is… this a trick question?” Merlin frowned.

“Merlin. You admitted to being a sorcerer in front of my father. I told him you weren’t, and _he believed me_.

“Well, you said… you told him why you didn’t think I was- but you knew- but.”

“When has my father ever been reasonable about sorcerers?” Merlin could only stare as Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose, looking frustrated. “I could influence them all – my father and his councilors – because I acted quickly, before your ridiculous confession could set in their minds.”

“Influence,” Merlin squeaked, “what do you mean _influence_?”

“It’s not a foolproof method. I can’t convince people against what they believe to be true, or against what they see plainly – if you’d done any actual magic I could have talked till I was blue in the face and gotten nowhere.”

“Did you- have you ever done that,” Merlin felt dizzy, “to me?”

Arthur smiled with too many teeth. “Shoe’s on the other foot now, isn’t it. It’s no fun, finding out someone was lying to you.”

“But you knew!” Merlin objected loudly, “You knew what I was, it wasn’t a secret from you!”

“ _You_ thought it was. You must have thought I was an _idiot_ ,” Arthur glared, “And to answer your question, no. All magic-users have some level of protection against my influence – the more powerful the sorcerer the less I can affect them. I’ve never been able to so much as touch your mind, never mind influence it.”

Merlin balanced on the edge of that confession, trust and disbelief vying for his conviction. And regardless of what Arthur said, Merlin was very aware that this was what Arthur would have been going through if the prince really had been as oblivious as Merlin had thought. And somehow that made it all fall into place. Yes, Merlin had drunk poison for Arthur, but Arthur had risked his life to go pick a flower for Merlin; they would have died without each other. Arthur was forever protecting Merlin, just like Merlin did Arthur; it was just what they did.

“Alright.”

Arthur looked almost startled for a moment, like Merlin had done something unexpected, but his face smoothed out quickly, and he just nodded.

There was something though… “Wait. You weren’t going to tell me,” Merlin realized, “You were never going to tell me you could do this. And you’re angry at _me_? What the hell, Arthur! Why hide being a sorcerer or, or using a magic item from me?”

“Because that would only have been another lie - I’m not using some trinket, and I’m not a sorcerer.”

“But. But you have magic.”

“No, not the way you do. Not through study and book-learning.” Arthur leaned back against the wall by the window, arms still wrapped almost protectively around him. “I couldn’t learn a spell if my life depended on it. What I have is… innate.”

Merlin wanted to protest, because really his magic was pretty innate as well, something that Arthur seemed to have missed, but. “Why is that bad?”

“Oh honestly Merlin,” Arthur grit out as he glared at Merlin, looking almost defiant, “It’s not that difficult. I’m a creature of magic.

Merlin just blinked. “But your parents were human. Look, if this is something you’ve cooked up just because you can do a bit of magic-“

“Enough! If you’re going to be extra _thick_ about this, then let me lay it out for you. Queen Ygraine died in childbirth, and her son was stillborn,” the look Arthur was leveling at Merlin was hard, but also somehow brittle. “Uther lost both wife and child in one night – why do you think the Great Purge was so bad? I’m not Uther’s child, and no I’m not going to discuss my life before I came to Camelot, so don’t ask. 

“I was still a child when I arrived here, five years after the queen died. Uther was mad with grief, and he wanted his son so badly that I could make him believe that I actually was Arthur, that he’d only sent his son away for safekeeping during the Purge,” Arthur fidgeted, almost distracted, “I was two or three years older than the real Arthur would have been, but Uther never even blinked. I’ve never seen it take so fast, or so completely. He truly and deeply believes that I am his son. I’ve never even had to reinforce the idea.” Arthur huffed a humorless laugh. “I suppose you could say he is my father, in a way; he raised me, after all. But I am not human and I never was.”

Arthur’s eyes went red. Glowing red, like when Sophia has him under her spell, only this time his gaze wasn’t vacant and passive, but intense and focused. “I'm a half-breed, something called a cambion. I feed on the energy humans produce.”

Honestly, Merlin was still trying to process past the _glowing red eyes_ , and the silence stretched uncomfortably.

Finally Arthur shrugged, dropping his gaze as his eyes dimmed to their normal dark blue. “So there you have it. Nothing to say to the monster, then?”

“Wha- I- You- No. Yes! I mean- Just. Shut up for a second.“ Merlin hid his face in his hands and took a deep breath. Right. So Arthur was some kind of creature, or demon. With glowing red eyes. Who fed of humans. Something nudged the back of his mind, something he’d read somewhere, in a bestiary maybe, about a cambion, and, “You eat _sex_?” Merlin squeaked.

Arthur gave him that ‘ _you are an idiot, Merlin, and I don’t know why I put up with you_ ’ look. “Yes, Merlin, I ‘eat sex,’ among other forms of energy,” he sighed, “you would pick that to fixate on. Why am I even surprised?” he queried the room in general.

“You, you just want me for my body!” Merlin said accusingly, pointing at Arthur with one hand and trying to shield himself with the other.

Arthur glared. “Whatever I want you for, it’s certainly not your quick mind. I survived perfectly well for fifteen years before you showed up, _Mer_ lin, don’t be more of an idiot than you have to.”

Merlin almost wanted a rampaging monster to show up just so that he’d have something else to concentrate on. Dazedly, he staggered back towards the bed and sat down hard. “But you do eat sex.”

Arthur started to say something, no doubt something scathing, but apparently changed his mind and only sighed, “As I said, among other things. Humans are really ridiculously free with their energy, sex is just the easiest form to collect it in. Outside of that, sparring with the knights ensures that I never go hungry.”

Merlin flopped back onto Arthur’s bed, one thing suddenly clear. “I’m really not handling this well, am I.”

Arthur huffed, amused. “Well, you haven’t tried to kill me or run away yet, which might count for something. Of course I’m not sure it’s not just your grave mental affliction that’s to blame for that.”

Merlin remembered Arthur’s defense of him in front of King Uther that day. “What, you mean being in love?”

“Maybe,” Arthur said quietly, uncertainly. Arthur wasn’t meant for uncertainty, and part of Merlin wanted to hug him, make it better.

“Can I have some time?” Merlin asked.

“Yes. As long as you don’t intend to spend all night hogging my bed,” Arthur amended tartly.

“Oh, forgive me, sire,” Merlin said, heavy on the sarcasm as he rolled upright.

“I’ll. I’ll see you tomorrow then?” Merlin said when he got to the door.

“See that you do,” Arthur replied with a shrug, feigning nonchalance.

Merlin nodded and let himself out. Maybe things would be less confusing in the light of day. Not that Merlin was counting on it.


End file.
